Falling Apart
by LuminaCarina
Summary: They're old now, but that doesn't mean they're useless. The Golden Trio will show them all and go out with a bang.


**Written for the Random Prompt challenge.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter**

Hermione sighs.

She's bored out of her mind, and even though there are things to be done, nobody will let her do them.

'We don't want you to get hurt,'' they say, ''Why don't you go lie down and read a book, huh grandma?''

She doesn't want to read a damn book! She has read every book in the Hogwarts library, the Ministry archives and almost all of them in the big muggle library.

(What's the name of that library again?)

It's a fact her family often forgets, or chooses to forget, and it offends her that they would think her some feeble old woman who can be placated with a handful of empty words. She's Hermione Granger, dammit all to Hell, the (former) Headmistress of Hogwarts, the (former) Head of the Department for Regulations of Magical Creatures. She has helped lead and win a war.

Who do they think they are? They're just a bunch of ungrateful brats, and she wishes she could cuff them over their big, thick, self-absorbed heads.

A drooling toddler wandered away from a horde of other toddlers, all of them remarkably similar, and is now staring at her with its fist in its mouth.

''Yes, what is it you need?'' she snaps, for she really doesn't have the patience to deal with children.

''Ga-ga!'' the child babbles, ''Ga-ga-ga-ga-_ga_!''

This is why she doesn't like children. They're stupid and nonsensical, and they never understand even the most basic of all instructions.

''Go to your mother,'' she commands it, ''She must be worried about you.''

The child toddles off, an impressive feat for such a tiny brain, and she's once more left alone in blessed silence.

Bloody Hell. She's once more alone in silence.

Well, she could find something to do. She's smart (The most brilliant witch since Rowena herself!) and she can entertain herself until either Harry or Ron owl her.

The clock reads 5:16 pm. She stares at it for a while, waiting for the numbers to change, but they never do. The clock must be broken.

She suddenly blinks, gathering her straying thoughts.

That was it!

She could owl Harry and Ron! Merlin knows they get in trouble too often to get bored. She would just latch on to them and wait for them to do something funny. She can already see it.

Ron would say something, and Harry would take it the wrong way, and the two of them would go off on an adventure and get into trouble, and would have to call her to rescue them. That was how it always was, and she can hardly wait for it to happen again.

It takes some time, but she finally gets someone to find her an owl. It's a weedy looking boy, with that annoying blonde cowlick her idiot husband had, who brings her an owl that's about ready to keel over and die.

(No wonder I didn't like the boy. The boy, my grandson, is just like my fool of a husband had been. The stupidity – none of my children inherited my brains – combined with callousness would make anyone into an oaf. When you put those things together with vanity, well, you got my husband and the rest of my family.)

(Why did I ever marry him?)

The sickly owl is soon flying in the general direction of the Channel, and she settles in for a long wait for a response.

* * *

><p>''Your owl is back.''<p>

A woman is shaking her awake with a gentler hand than usual. A cloud of grey hair and brown eyes was all she can catch before the woman is gone.

(Is that Ophelia? Merlin, she got old.)

No longer bothering herself with the conundrum that is her aged daughter, Hermione eagerly opens the letter.

It's short, it's rude, and it's written in Harry's chicken-scratch. She fondly traces the slightly lopsided words and smiles a sharp smile. So he still can't write straight, can he?

(Odd, I was sure I'd managed to teach him to make straight lines a good sixty years ago.)

Hermione rises to her feet with the customary ache in her knees. She throws a shawl over her shoulders and rubs away the last vestiges of sleep from her eyes. There is no place for tiredness where she's going.

She wobbles through the door and summons the Knight bus, not stopping to even close the door of the fancy manor that used to be her home.

A girl greets her from the entrance of the bus, short and pretty and beaming. All she can think of is – _wrong_. But she doesn't voice her unease, and instead she just pays for a ticket and goes in. No one recognizes her. Again, _wrong_.

(They used to point and whisper whenever I went out. I used to rage about it.)

(Why am I sad now?)

When she arrives at the foul house Harry and Ron call home, she's strangely satisfied. Well, not that strangely, she has missed them in the recent years, but it's the feeling of homesickness going away that surprises her. As if she has been away from home for so long she forgot to miss it.

Her best friends are grey-haired, and somehow that's so funny that she bursts into laughter.

(When's the last time I laughed?)

''Oi, what's that about?''

Ron hasn't changed at all. He's still defensive and loud, only with white hair and a few dozen extra pounds. Really, she thinks wistfully, he's not at all different than the awkward gangly boy who kissed her and then refused to speak about it later.

''Nothing,'' she giggles, ''just thinking about how you haven't changed since Hogwarts.''

That mollifies him, and Harry scoffs from his place next to him.

''Yeah, he just got fat.''

She smiles again as she watches them argue, and she feels like a schoolgirl again. She's not Hermione Granger, the Headmistress and the Head of Department, she's Hermione Granger, the Gryffindor prefect.

These are her best friends and soon they'll go off on a hare-brained scheme and almost get killed. She'll go with them, of course, and she won't worry about her annoying family and boring days. Her life won't ever be dull again.

''How are you 'Mione?''

Harry aged the least out of the three of them. His hair still has some grey in it, and he didn't get fat or sick. His eyes are still sharp and they seem to always be searching for a snitch. Really, she's jealous of him. Despite the wrinkles, his skin is still somewhat young-looking.

''I'm bored,'' she complains, ''my life is boring, my family is boring, and even Crookshanks is boring. All he does is eat and sleep, these days. Sometimes he even forgoes eating for sleeping. And my family acts as if I'm some useless has-been.''

''Welcome to the club. Did you know that Sarah called me an old geezer last week?'' he was utterly scandalised, ''The impertinent brat, all she cares about is her research. She went and became a muggle scientist, you know? She makes plastic flowers. Plastic flowers, Hermione! Ones that grow like real ones! I mean, what's next? Metal trees?''

Hermione understands him there. Half her pathetic grandchildren went and turned muggle, and are now doing and making things that defy nature. The one with blue eyes, Medea's son, went to live on Mars. On Mars, of all places. Really, is nothing holy anymore?

''Come on you two,'' Ron cuts in, ''you sound like old people.''

''We are old,'' she reminds sourly.

(It's not like she wants to be older than one hundred and twenty. But hush, she's really a hundred and sixteen, and will remain so 'til the day she dies.)

''Well I'm not!''

His proclamation sounds very much like Fudge used to, all pompous and puffed up. Harry finds it just as funny as she does, and they chortle together like kids.

(Why didn't I visit them sooner?)

(Because I was ashamed and I didn't want them to see me like this, all old and wrinkled and slouching, with white hair and age spots.)

''We should do something,'' Harry muses, ''Something that will show the entire world that we aren't worthless just because we're old. Something big.''

Ron looks very interested in this, and she covers her face with her hands.

This is why she loves them. Because they're foolish and dumb, but it's a good kind of foolish and dumb, and they're hers, so it doesn't matter anyway.

They don't get offended or unsure of their idea because she looks exasperated; they know she's actually grinning behind her hands.

''What do you have in mind?''

Those are the words that are the final nail in the coffin.

* * *

><p>''Are you sure about this, Harry?'' she asks again, but she's excited and happy, and they can see it so they don't even bother replying.<p>

They're creeping through the London House of Knowledge, a fancy building with a fancy name that will be formally opened to the public tomorrow. It's supposed to be some museum/library/church hybrid, used to educate the children and elevate the government. It's gaudy and shiny and made out of glass and silver, with a big glass dome instead of a normal roof.

Hermione looks at it and clinically wonders who will get to clean it after the pigeons crap all over it.

''Here?'' Ron whispers, and she can't help but get caught up in the sheer presumptuousness of this childish prank. Her knees are aching more than ever, but she expertly ignores it.

''No, not here.''

They wander some more, trying to find a way to the entrance gates where they'll set up their prank.

(This place is such a maze! Don't they have some way to differentiate the hallways and halls?)

''Ok,'' Harry announces, ''I think this is it.''

They check to see if they're at the right place, and once they confirm it, they start on their work.

Harry plays with several spells, trying to remember which is used to conjure what, and Ron gets started on colouring the walls and floors. She watches over their work for a moment and then turns and sits on a nearby bench. She won't be actually doing anything; she's a prefect, for Merlin's sake!

''Right, I think I remember now.''

She looks away from Ron and sees Harry, sitting on the floor and with a look of utmost concentration on his face. He waves his wand and… conjures up an elephant.

The beast is rather small, the size of a horse, but it probably has the biggest pair of lungs in the whole of Britain. It honks and wails for a terrifying second, the sounds echoing eerily through the empty room, and then Harry silences it.

''Thanks, mate,'' Ron snarks, ''I forgot to take my medication today, so if I die, you can tell everybody that you were the one who gave me a heart-attack.''

''Everybody?'' she can't help but jibe, ''Somebody would care?''

''Yes,'' Harry accepts the game, ''and are you sure it's your heart that's giving out? I'd have thought it to be your liver, what with the way you drink.''

''Hardy, har, har. You have no right to speak. After all, you're not the shining example of health either, you buggering maggot.''

Hermione giggles at that, ''So I'm not the only one falling apart, am I? Tell me, are you, by any chance, not taking your potions?''

They both snort at that.

''I take mine,'' Ron says, ''though they only make me feel worse. But hey, I'm dying either way, so why not speed up the process a little? Now this bum over here, he doesn't take his at all.''

''Of course I don't. Those blasted poisons are made to kill me, not help me get better. 'Sides, it's not like there's a cure for old. And I'm old, I'm sick, I'm dying and there's nothing anyone can do about that.''

Harry's face is the picture of smug conviction, and she wonders when they stopped giving a damn.

But she doesn't really worry about it, because really? She's one hundred and twenty seven years old, she's in a perpetual state of rotting, and the one thing she still cares about is her friends. As long as they're alive, so will she be. And when they're dead… well, so will she be.

(''Time is such a slut, she's screws everybody.'' My disgusting husband's quote, but I have to agree that he was right about that one. He may have voiced it crudely, but it's still true.)

''The elephant is too small,'' she decides, ''you should make it bigger.''

Harry goes to work on that, and she goes to talk to Ron.

He has painted the whole room pink and red with blue spots, and it looks like a drug induced psychedelic dream.

''You like it?'' he asks, and she has to say that she does. It's very… very. It reminds her of Luna somehow.

''Yes, it's lovely.''

He muffles a snicker, ''You would be the only one to call this lovely. Really, Mya,'' he shakes his head, ''only you.''

She stays quiet for a while, just enjoying the moment.

''Hey,'' Ron adds, ''You remember, that time after we won, you know, the battle and all?''

Hermione licks her lips and nods her head. How could she forget?

''Well, did you ever think about that? Before you, er, got married and all?''

Of course she thought about it. She broke her heart and her mind over it, and when she walked down the aisle to marry Roger, she thought about all her 'what if's.

What if Ron hadn't ignored her? What if she had got the courage to talk to him about it? What if Harry hadn't chosen to stay out it and let them work it out for themselves? What if, what if, what if.

''Yes,'' she answers, ''I did.''

(I still think about it, sometimes. Of course, I also think of what would have happed had I let myself fall for Harry, but all of my thoughts mean and value nothing in the end.)

''Oh, that's great.'' Harry interrupts them, ''You're having a heart-to-heart. Well, 'Mione, how 'bout you come over here and make the elephant bigger, and I'll sit over here and laugh at how awkward the two of you are. It's a win-win for everybody!''

''How's that a win-win?'' Ron complains, his ears a scarlet red.

She didn't say anything though, opting to just go and make the elephant bigger. It's not like she wanted to continue her conversation with Ron anyway.

''So,'' Harry said after a few minutes of tense and uncomfortable silence, ''I'm guessing you don't want to talk about your haunting and harrowing romance anymore, right? Well,'' he went on when neither of them spoke, ''You could always talk about your kids. I mean, that's a safe topic. Who doesn't like kids?''

(I don't.)

''My brats are all dead now.'' Ron announces, ''They dropped like flies. Really, I'm disappointed, they couldn't outlive me, of all people. And my grandkids are all incapable of anything. They can't keep a job, can't raise their kids, or their grandkids. What did I ever teach them?''

''Well,'' Harry interjects dryly, ''What can you teach your kids? We're lucky if we instil some basic hygiene in them. Everything else is up to them.''

''Ophelia is ghastly old,'' she joins in, ''Medea's dead, and as for the boys… They're doing something. I think David's in India. Or was it China?''

''Meh,'' Harry shrugs, ''Who cares?''

She finds that she doesn't have anything to say to that, and so she goes back to enlarging the elephant.

* * *

><p>The next morning an entire crowd of people is gathered in front of the London House of Knowledge, waiting for the gates to be opened. The Prime Minister gave a speech, welcoming everybody and making sure everyone saw this event as a beginning of a new age of even greater prosperity.<p>

He slowly cut the wide ribbon and walked up to the gates, pausing dramatically for effect, and opened them.

Pure chaos commenced.

Glitter and balloons exploded in a deafening boom, covering all the guests in sparkly yellow, and a giant pink elephant stomped out.

When the police and the fire brigade finally managed to get the situation under control, they went in to investigate. They found the entire building painted in obnoxious shades of red and, on a new white bench, three corpses.

The bodies were that of very old people, two men and a woman, and they all had different causes of death. A heart-attack, a kidney failing, and a simple natural death caused by age.

No one ever found out how the bodies got in there, or where the elephant came from.

(It disappeared from the zoo it was taken to after a few hours. No one could ever find it again.)

**So, what do you think?**

**I apologize if the characters are OOC, but then again, this is an AU, so they should be OOC.**

**Reviews would be welcomed.**


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